Battle of Staufen

Battle of Staufen

Part of: Baden Revolution

General Hoffmann and his troops storm the barricades behind the bridge over the Neumagen

date	September 24, 1848
place	Staufen im Breisgau
output	The troops are defeated and disbanded
consequences	The second Baden elevation is ended

Parties to the conflict
red republican irregulars	Grand Duchy of Baden ;
Commander
Moritz Wilhelm von Löwenfels; Gustav Struve	General Friedrich Hoffmann ; General Wilhelm Gayling von Altheim
Troop strength
800	900
losses
11 dead	1 dead; 8 wounded

The battle for Staufen was the only battle of the second Baden uprising (also known as the Struve Putsch ). On September 24, 1848 - a Sunday - Baden troops under General Friedrich Hoffmann defeated Gustav Struves' free troops . The second Baden uprising was over.

The second uprising

The Baden uprising in September 1848 is to be seen in connection with the events in the Frankfurt National Assembly , which took place on 17./18. September led to an uprising in Frankfurt . The left republicans in exile in Switzerland followed these events and were also urged by their supporters in Baden to join this uprising movement. On September 21, 1848 Gustav Struve set foot again on German soil with a few companions. From Basel he came over Riehen and Stetten to Loerrach , where already the afternoon the armed vigilantes occupied the main points of the city and the Grand Ducal officials had arrested. Struve arrived in Loerrach around 6 p.m. From the balcony of the town hall he proclaimed the German republic. He proclaimed martial law. All men aged 18–40 capable of arms were called to arms. In place of Johann Philipp Becker , who had not yet arrived , Moritz Wilhelm von Löwenfels took over the military leadership. Karl Blind acted as secretary of the provisional republican government and Friedrich Neff was supposed to provide the necessary financial means by requisitioning the public coffers.

Theodor Mögling and his military director Doll in the Wiesental formed a second department based in Schopfheim . The cooperation between the two groups was disrupted from the start and Doll did not accept his removal by Struve. Ultimately, both columns (Struve - Rheintal and Mögling - Wiesental) should meet at Horben in front of Freiburg in order to then take the city. Due to the compulsory mobilization of the military forces of the communities (the Hecker procession had only relied on volunteers), Struve expected to be able to muster a force of 10,000 men.

The Struve column moved on September 23 from Lörrach via Kandern and Schliengen to Müllheim .

The storm on Staufen

On September 24, 1848 four battalions of militants advanced from Müllheim to Staufen. Löwenfels immediately had two battalions march further in the direction of Freiburg, so that at the headquarters, which was set up in the Staufen town hall, only two battalions remained, which in addition almost mutinied beforehand.

After the grand ducal government in Karlsruhe had received news of the events in the Oberland on September 22nd , it set Baden troops under General Friedrich Hoffmann in motion. However, the relocation of the troops was hindered by sabotage on the railway systems in Ettlingen , Achern , Friesenheim , Orschweier and Krozingen . Early in the morning of the day the Baden troops arrived at Krozingen with two infantry battalions, an artillery division and a cavalry squadron . On hearing that Struve and the irregulars were at Heitersheim , the troops turned there. Then they discovered that the troops had meanwhile left Heitersheim and were moving to Staufen via Wettelbrunn . The military initially took Heitersheim Castle, which was only briefly defended by a few irregulars. General Hoffmann divided his units into two columns at Wettelbrunn. While General Wilhelm Gayling von Altheim was to attack the town from Kirchhofen with a battalion , Hoffmann went to the bridge over the Neumagen via Grunern . This bridge had been covered by the troops to prevent access - but the beam structure was still intact.

Although the ranks of the troops were already thinning in the face of the troops, they were able to occupy the fence around the city and the barricades erected at the city entrances. The fire on the advancing military was opened immediately around 1 p.m. They responded using their artillery, although houses were damaged, but the military effect remained low. Hoffmann succeeded in wading through the Neumagen with his troops and overcoming the first barricade. The advance from the bridge towards the town hall was made more difficult by two more barricades and heavy gunfire from the houses and town hall. While Hoffmann was making slow progress here, Gayling had taken the barricade at the other entrance to the city and his troops were advancing into the city. Hoffmann could now take the town hall and have it occupied. During the occupation of the city there was sometimes house-to-house fighting, in which two uninvolved citizens of Staufen were killed. At around 3 p.m. the city was completely occupied by the troops. Gustav Graf von Keller was appointed Reich Commissioner and visited Staufen shortly after the battle.

The death of the hamlet musicians

Struves Freischar on September 23, 1848 on the way from Lörrach to Müllheim; in front the hamlet musicians

On September 25th - one day after the occupation by the Baden troops - there was a serious incident in Staufen. Some of the irregulars had hidden in Staufen houses the day before. Seven musicians from Weil am Rhein had also found shelter in the Wirtshaus zum Kranz . They had marched along on the Struve train with a ringing game. When the occupation troops were shot at from the pub zum Kranz on September 25, the soldiers stormed the house and found six of the hamlet musicians during the search. Five of them were shot dead by the troops immediately without interrogation - one escaped while the seventh had left the house before the incident.

Commemoration

Since 2003, scenes of the battle with the participation of the Hecker group from Offenburg have been presented in the annual open air event Stages - StAdtGESchichten - Staufener Zeitreise .

literature

• Gustav Struve : History of the three popular uprisings in Baden . Publishing house by Jenni, Sohn, Bern 1849; changed reprint: Verlag Rombach, Freiburg i.Br. 1980, pp. 118-145
• Moritz Wilhelm von Löwenfels; Friedrich Neff ; G. Thielmann: The second republican uprising in Baden: along with some revelations about the republican coffers remaining , Basel 1848, pp. 31–39 online at the Baden State Library
• Paul Nunnenmacher: The end of the Second Baden Revolution in Staufen . In: Das Markgräflerland, Volume 2/1999, pp. 65–67
• Friedrich Rottra: The procession of the irregulars from the Oberland and its end in the battle in Staufen on September 24, 1848: from my own experience . In: Das Markgräflerland Volume 1973, p. 131 ff.
• Emil Stark: All about the Struve Putsch of September 1848 . In: Schau-ins-Land, issue 1958, pp. 110–119 digitized version of the Freiburg University Library

Web links

• Freiburg newspaper of September 26, 1848; Retrieved August 10, 2013
• Freiburg newspaper of September 28, 1848 with the official report by General Hoffmann; Retrieved August 10, 2013
• Johann Schmitt: A beautiful new song from the world-famous Struwwel-Putsch , accessed on August 20, 2013

Individual evidence

1. ↑ the Struves free troops used red flags, which were only partially decorated with black, red and gold ribbons; one consciously set oneself apart from the moderate forces in the National Assembly
2. ↑ s. on this, Struve pp. 116/117
3. ^ Moritz Wilhelm von Löwenfels from Vallendar near Koblenz, former Prussian lieutenant and teacher of mathematics and French
4. ^ Friedrich Christian Doll from Kirn
5. ^ Andreas Lüneberg: Mannheim and the revolution in Baden 1848–1849 , Reinhard Welz Vermittler Verlag eK, 2004, p. 87
6. ↑ whereby it remains open whether out of conviction or only because of the orders issued by Struve.
7. ↑ Hillenbrand reports that the shot was triggered by a "Wanner von Binzen".
8. ^ Peter Hillenbrand: The revolution of 1848/49 with special consideration of the events in Weil am Rhein and in the Markgräflerland . In: Das Markgräflerland , Volume 2/1999, pp. 60/61; Julius Kraus: The rescued revolutionary flag of the hamlet irregulars from 1848 . In: Das Markgräflerland , issue 2/1986, p. 75.
9. ↑ Homepage of the city stories
10. ↑ s. Homepage of the Hecker Group

Coordinates: 47 ° 52 '53 "  N , 7 ° 43' 53"  E